Our Lady of the Effective Rebrand
Maple Syrup Nip Slip
I was only in Montreal for two weeks before needing to fly back to Seattle and help movers pack our apartment up.
However, in the short time I was back, I was able to see quite a few people. One friend I went out of my way to see was an aficionado of garbage movies and threw me for a loop with an actual good movie - Jesus Shows You The Way To The Highway (2019), a Estonian/Ethiopian surreal psychedelic scifi/comedy which more or less perfectly matched our mental states.
Almost immediately upon returning to Montreal, we started heading south via a rental car - picked up moments before a labor action by local healthcare/education workers would have made it impossible - to visit my partner’s cousin for Thanksgiving.
I had never been to Vermont or New Hampshire and frankly questioned the origin of states that are so curiously small and bunched up - like the Balkans or something. When I see borders like that I think “hey, I bet there was an enclave or some greater than usual violence associated with these political boundaries”.
And it turns out I was right:
In 1764, King George III proclaimed the territory to be under the jurisdiction of New York, which meant that the New Hampshire Grant landowners did not have legal title. Meanwhile, New York continued selling large tracts of land, many of which overlapped with those already inhabited. The dispute led to Ethan Allen forming the Green Mountain Boys, an illicit militia that attacked New York settlers and speculators through arson and mob violence
As one would expect from such a town, it has a big church near the centre.
What you might not expect is the impact changing demographics - particularly around religiosity - has resulted in.
